Worth a Thousand Words
by callmeonetrack
Summary: Kara and the Chief have a little heart to heart the night before the Decommissioning.


Title: Worth a Thousand Words  
Characters: Kara, Chief  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: None, set pre-Mini  
Disclaimer: It's Ron D. Moore's world, we just play with it.

It was 0200 and all was quiet on Galactica's hangar deck. The CAP was flying and a few specialists hovered here and there, but with the ship due to be decommissioned in less than 24 hours, most of the crew was busy elsewhere, carousing drunkenly in the rec room or packing up their quarters for their next postings.

Chief Galen Tyrol hurried along the deck, a paper-wrapped package containing the plaque he'd had specially made for Commander Adama clutched under one arm. Chief was pleased. He knew the commander was going to be shocked by the refurbishment of his bird from the Cylon war. He just hoped his specialists could keep their traps shut until the unveiling.

So absorbed in his thoughts was the Chief that he almost missed the small figure curled under one of the vipers. Starbuck's viper, he realized with a grimace. Great. One day left and Chief was going to get his ass handed to him if Starbuck found out someone was messing around near her bird. For the most part, he and the Galactica's ace fighter pilot had a good working relationship. Lieutenant Thrace was tough, but she was fair. At least when it came to flying anyway. She wanted her viper to be in top condition and, unlike some other pilots, she wasn't above getting her own hands dirty to achieve it. Chief could respect that.

He gently laid the package on a nearby cart and rounded the tail of the Mark V, ready to ream out whoever was trespassing on hallowed ground, only to pull up short when he saw the blonde fighter pilot herself sitting cross-legged under the wing, clutching a bottle of ambrosia and looking morosely at a photograph.

"LT?"

Starbuck looked up at him, eyes slightly unfocused, the sheen of liquor on her lips, and what looked remarkably like the silvery traces of tears down her cheeks. Tyrol was so taken aback he didn't move for a moment. In the two years Starbuck had been stationed on Galactica, he'd never seen her look so unhinged and he sure as hell'd never seen her cry.

"You OK, sir?"

She blinked at him and shook her head slightly, then the trademark Starbuck shit-eating grin crept over her face. "Chief! Have a drink with me." She held the bottle out to him. "Let's toast the Old Bucket one last time." He watched as she hastily tried to tuck the photo into her jacket with her other hand, but her fingers were shaking and the picture fluttered down to the scarred decking.

Tyrol leaned down and picked it up, knowing he'd probably catch hell from Starbuck for his curiosity, but unable to help himself. "Hey, what ya got here?"

"S' nothing." Kara reached out to try to pluck the paper from his hands, but Chief easily eluded her reach and sank down next to her, taking a pull off the bottle. Hell, he wasn't on duty now. He studied the picture more closely. There was Starbuck, looking happier than he'd ever seen her, wrapped in the embrace of a young man he'd seen before...somewhere. Another man hovered on the far edge of the photograph, looking incredibly uneasy and clutching a pyramid ball. Oh, there was a story behind this one. Chief could smell it.

"That's the commander's son, isn't it?" He pointed to the man holding Starbuck.

She sighed, defeated. "Yeah. Zak." She looked away, her eyes scanning the deck and finding no purchase to fix on. Instead, she wrenched the bottle back from the Chief and took a long swig, swiping her wrist across her mouth when she was finished. "I taught him to fly."

Tyrol looked from her to the picture again, seeing a younger Starbuck smiling in a way he's never seen and hugging the man's neck. He wondered if she meant it literally.

"He was one of my nuggets at flight academy."

Understanding dawned and Tyrol nodded. He knew now why the LT had never said anything about his and Sharon's relationship. He knew she and Boomer were friends, and Gods knew Starbuck never had much use for the interpersonal military rules, like frat regs, but now he wondered if she had a more personal understanding of this particular problem.

Zak Adama didn't look much like his old man, but Tyrol supposed it also explained the Commander's blind spot for Starbuck. She got away with a lot, being Galactica--and, Chief secretly suspected, maybe the fleet's--best pilot, mostly antagonizing Colonel Tigh. Starbuck could do impossible things with her bird, things that the Chief who knew the capabilities and limitations of the ships he supervised inside and out (even if he'd never actually flown any of them) couldn't even believe they could do until he saw Starbuck doing them with his own eyes. He'd always assumed she'd earned so much of the Old Man's respect for her flying prowess, but now he thought maybe even the Commander put his own personal bonds first on occasion.

Tyrol isn't much interested in gossip, but it's impossible to not hear things on a battlestar. He wracked his brain now trying to remember what he'd heard about the Commander's kid. He'd recognized him because the Old Man had a big picture of the kid in uniform in his office. Was he stationed on the Atlantia?

His reverie was interrupted when Starbuck turned to him.

Kara'd been plastered before (of course) but there was an oddly surreal quality to this night. She hadn't felt like celebrating tonight, steering clear of the rec room, knowing every moment she sat there, she'd be remembering other nights, slamming shots with Helo, pulling full colors out of her ass in Triad. And in less than 24 hours it'll all be over.

She flicked a glance at the Chief, who's still staring at her photograph. They haven't ever done this. She didn't even know his first name till she'd been on the ship for almost a year. She's never spoken it. But Chief takes care of things. The birds, of course, but the pilots too. Dee calls them home, but Chief is the one who welcomes them. Who fixes their broken parts. Kara's drunk enough to wish (even if she doesn't actually believe it) that he could fix hers, but there's probably not enough spare parts in the universe. Definitely not in this bucket.

"Chie--Galen. Can you keep a secret?"

He looked up and she saw the surprise in his eyes, but he just nodded.

She should be picking up the phone or a pen and telling someone else this, but she guesses the Chief's the closest she's got to a big brother these days. Not that she ever really felt like anyone's sister.

"I was going to marry him."

He frowned and gods bless him, he looked sad. She knew if she was sitting here with Helo or Boomer they would try to comfort her now, put an arm around her, encourage her to talk about it. She wouldn't. Kara figured that's why she's telling the Chief this instead. She took another swig of alcohol.

"I was going to marry him, but instead—" Kara laughed but it sounded all wrong, like a bitter, broken thing. Or maybe that was right, after all.

"I killed him."

In a flash it came back to the Chief, the gossip about Zak Adama, the commander's son whose flying was so bad, he managed to blow up his viper the first time he went up. He did the math. She was Zak's flight instructor, she must have known he wasn't exactly a chip off the old block. Chief was silent as he handed the picture back to the LT. No, to Kara.

She took it but made no move to put it away. Chief fidgeted, wondering if he should touch her in some way, but they didn't have that kind of relationship. He wished Sharon was here. He looked at the lieutenant now but the Starbuck mask (and it's suddenly blindingly obvious that that's exactly what it always was) has fallen away, and there's only a girl sitting there in dirty fatigues, with guilt shining in her eyes.

Galen knew something about that kind of guilt. Every time Sharon took one of his ships out, he said a prayer she'd come back to joke with him about busted gimbals, but a small part of him feared they were tempting the gods with their laughter. Once in a while, not that often, but often enough, he had nightmares of her raptor going down, a gimbal and no one but himself to blame.

He cleared his throat, forcing his thoughts back to the present conversation. "I don't know much about that, Sir, but I know you've saved a lot of lives here." It's true. Many a rookie on the bucket owes their continued existence to Starbuck talking them through a rough landing on the comms or steering them away from implosion on a fast-approaching asteroid.

She smiled now, a flicker of Starbuck peeping through, but her voice was still softer than he recognized, when she asked, "You think the Gods are keeping score, Chief?"

Galen Tyrol, the son of a priest and an oracle, knows they are. "Yeah, I do."

She nodded a little, her head bowing to look at the picture again. He looked as well and saw the heavy crease in the middle of the photo, indicating that the second man has been folded away, out of sight for a long time. Chief still didn't recognize him.

"Sir, who's that?" He tapped the photo.

He'd be here in...oh about, eight hours. The thought made her stomach roll. Kara Thrace shied away from few things (and Starbuck even less), but if she could just climb in her rack, pull the covers up over her head and sleep away the entire rest of the day she would. But Lee is relentless. He'd just come find her and turn those frakking blue eyes on her and she'd be lost again. It's not like she can lock him out of the Officers' Quarters. Even the heads are communal. The only place you get alone time on a military ship is the brig. Hmm, maybe...

She realized Chief was still waiting for an answer. "That's Lee," she said flatly. "He was almost my... brother." She hoped the Chief didn't notice how she almost choked on the last word.

Lee Adama, Chief realized. The name didn't ring a bell. He's never seen a picture in the Old Man's quarters of this one. He looked closer now, thinking that if Zak looked little like an Adama, Lee looked even less like one. Although, there was a set to his jaw, that maybe Chief's seen the Old Man get when he's really perturbed.

"You guys close?" He looked at Starbuck.

Chief was shocked for the umpteenth time that night to see a definite blush creeping up the lieutenant's neck. "Not anymore."

"Bet the old man's gonna be thrilled to see him."

She snorted, but didn't say anything.

Galen looked at the photo again, inspired. If he stopped by the press office, maybe he could find a picture of the Commander and both his sons. He could frame it, the Commander would love it. The Chief got to his feet and looked down at Starbuck.

"Well, I'm off, LT." He watched as she took another swig from the bottle. "Hey, don't forget you have to fly tomorrow in the ceremony. That 0600 reveille will get here pretty quick."

Kara nodded, but didn't move. She lifted the bottle again, and Chief wondered if he should try to take it from her. She might thank him in the morning. Or he might lose his balls in the process. She wasn't acting like Starbuck right now, but he didn't particularly want to see how fast the tiger could emerge. He decided not to test his luck.

As the Chief walked away, Kara stared at the picture one last time, her finger tracing the three young faces. She imagined Lee would look a lot like this when she finally got up the courage to tell him what she did. That day was not gonna be today. She folded back the part with Lee again, escaping his recrimination even if she couldn't escape her own, and slid the photo into her jacket pocket.

Kara got to her feet, gave her viper an affectionate pat, and sauntered off towards the rec room, feeling strangely lighter. No point in sleeping now anyway. She felt the Triad tables calling her and wondered exactly what it would take to get thrown in the brig. She'd feel bad about missing the ceremony, but the Old Man would forgive her. He always did.

--fin--


End file.
